Connect With The Passings

I visit grandma every few months. Which seems nice but isn't. Silent Glen is not far from my house. Hell, I could probably walk there in an hour or so. By the way, Silent Glen is a terrifying name for a place that old people live.

There’s a sign outside that says “Silent Glen, adding life to years” and the first ten times I visited I always read it as “Silent Glen, adding years to life” which I thought was a pretty ballsy claim.

I bring a DVD of “The Notebook” for my grandma. I figure old people like sappy movies staring old people, maybe not though. No matter.

I hit on the receptionist. We went to high school together and she blew me in a closet at a high school house party. Surprisingly she wasn't interested in the stupider, fatter, unemployed version of me.

You see a lot of partials in the halls of an old folks home. A man garbling a partial sentence, a woman partially remembering her own daughter, countless residents partially getting a spoonful of soup in their mouths. All partial, and half-life and death fade into new days, everything is replaced.

I walk into her room and give her the DVD. She takes it, tells me she has already seen it, tells me she didn't like it, then thanks me anyway.

She complains that her daughter, my aunt, never visits. And then it is silent for a while. I get up to leave and ask her what she is doing tomorrow. She says she is getting ready to die.

“Are you ready to die?” She asks.

“Always.” I say with a smile.

We laugh like crazy and she dies the next day.